"Don't be. You did exactly the right thing."
"We didn't know! We were sure you were dead! Our instruments showed a major eruption right where our reports said you were being held. No one could have survived!"
"Except that we weren't there. You might be interested to know that we picked up Lieutenant Commander Douglass before we lifted."
"Douglass! He's with you?"
Kendric nodded. "He's aboard the freighter we arrived in."
Morganen looked puzzled. "Who, sir, is 'we?"
"A friend of mine, from the Grod mines. Terra Chenetta Lloyd... T.C. to her friends. You'll meet her later, when we can bring them aboard."
Morganen's brow furrowed. "That's going to be a problem, Captain."
"We were told the squadron has mutinied. Why don't you fill me
in on the situation?"
The news was not good.
The Gaidheal had returned alone to Alba before the TOG military command could notice Morganen's absence, but the loss of the Damadas could not be disguised. Admiral Arada had used the new VLCA in Albasynch orbit to communicate with Admiral Hogarth, commanding Squadron 373 at Tarshibul. The Damadas and the Gaidheal had, obviously, not arrived at Tarshibul to join the Imperial fleet there. When Morganen filed his report that the Damadas had vanished in T-space because of some unknown drive malfunction and I hat the Gaidheal had returned to report the fact, few seemed to swallow the story whole.
It would only be a matter of time before enough Imperial bureaucrats talked to one another through their galactic communication relays to realize that there might be a connection between the loss of the Damadas and the destruction of an attacking Velox Class frigate during the raid on Haetai-Aleph.
Morganen had improvised on the cover story he and Elliot had worked out to explain why the two ships should return to Alba after setting off for the rendezvous at Tarshibul. The Special Administrator had felt he would be able to use the story of an unexpected fluctuation i n the drive convenor matrices to delay further deployments of the Gael fleet while Gael drive techs carefully checked the matter out. Morganen's report to Admiral Arada stated that a field fluctuation aboard the destroyer had forced the Gaidheal to return to Alba, and that they suspected that a similar problem aboard the Damadas had destroyed the frigate.
Morganen had hoped to use the delay to find Elliot so that he'd know what their next move was to be. Elliot, however, could not be found. Repeated calls to his office on Alba went unanswered, and Admiral Arada's office would only say that he was "unavailable." The news had chilled Morganen. Suppose the IS had picked up Elliot for interrogation? Suppose TOG already knew everything about the plot from Elliot? What was TOG planning for the Gael Squadron?
There was worse. From Jaime, Kendric had learned that shortly before the Damadas and the Gaidheal had boosted outsystem, the order had come to round up all the families of men stationed aboard Gael Squadron ships and put them aboard two Aldeharan Class transports newly arrived insystem. It was estimated that more than three thousand people—parents, brothers and sisters, wives, even sweethearts—had been marched aboard those transports at Port Balmarin, put into cryogenic suspension, then boosted into orbit. Obviously, Elliot's plan to delay the TOG Governor's plans had failed or—worse—his own plan to somehow use the transports to ferry the squadron's loved ones to safety had horribly backfired.
The Gaidheal had returned six days after their departure for Narbon, to find the two transports in orbit. Then had come the waiting. Requests for clarification, for communication with the TOG authorities had gone unanswered.
A week before the Corrine had returned, the two Aldeharan Class transports had accelerated outsystem. The Gael Warrior's scanners had registered a clean line and velocity for them as they'd made the transition to T-space, but so far their destination was still a mystery.
At the same time the transports had left Alba orbit, a ground-to-orbit transport had arrived from Alba, bearing Overlord Gracchi and an unknown but large number of his personal troops. Civilians and nonessential personnel had been evacuated from Alba Port and sent to Alba, while military forces had secured the station. Gracchi had appeared on a vid transmission from Alba's Port Control and demanded that his technicians be allowed to come aboard the Gael ships to personally examine the drive matrices.
Morganen had refused. He had demanded the return of the Gael Squadron's hostage families or he would destroy Alba Port. Gracchi had smiled out of the viewscreen at Morganen and told him to go ahead. The Gaels might be able to kill an Overlord that way, but they would lose forever any chance of finding some three thousand of their family members who were now outbound aboard those two transports.
The situation had remained at an impasse for the past week. Deputations from other ships in the squadron had insisted that Morganen take some action, but almost any action was likely to bring the entire Imperial fleet down on them. There were three heavy cruisers off Alba now, and a much larger fleet could be expected at almost any time. Certainly, Gracchi must have sent for reinforcements through the VLCA as soon as the crisis had begun. At the moment, the only advantage the rebellious squadron had was the fact that the TOG Imperials could not fire on the Gael ships without destroying Alba Port, which they had been reluctant to do thus far.
How much longer would they wait before deciding to take that final step?
The disappearance of Caius Elliot was what caused Kendric the most sorrow. When Kendric's father had died, the TOG Administrator had been the one to open the doors wide to a whole new universe for the thirteen-year-old orphan. Throughout his school year, and later at the Academy, when resentment against the "upstart provie" had seemed more than the proud young Gael could stand, Caius Elliot had been like an emblem of what the TOG Imperium really stood for. Elliot had believed in TOG, in what it had done and could do for Mankind and its destiny in the Galaxy. Elliot's evident disillusionment with TOG in more recent years had shaken Kendric, but he had ignored the symptoms. Now it was obvious to him that Elliot had been working hard to protect the Gael Squadron, the whole Cluster. To do that, the man had been willing to work against TOG.
Why did you do it? For Father? For me?
Or was it because you had already seen, long before / could, what TOG had become?
Kendric dragged his mind back to the present problem, the standoff between the Gael Squadron and an Imperial overlord.
"They won't move until they have a larger fleet here, that's certain," Kendric said, frowning at the overhead in the Warrior's sickbay. "But you're right. They'd rather have this station than destroy it and build another. The problem is, they can afford to wait it out, and we can't. Every hour takes those transports farther off to.. .wherever."
Morganen looked glum. "The ship personnel are ready to mutiny against the mutiny. They're all against TOG and what it's doing to our people, but they can't just stand by and watch their loved ones shipped off. I've already had several crew delegations propose that we negotiate our surrender with Gracchi, in exchange for the safe return of their families."
"I have a feeling Gracchi would be all too willing to do just that."
"Eh? You know where they're bound?"
"Let's just say I have a new perspective on TOG's methods of dealing with stubborn people. We may know more once I'm able to get at a database."
Morganen's long face became longer. "I'm afraid I've let things slide into a real mess, Captain."
"You did all you could Lenard," Kendric said, and he meant it.
"I've been an idiot...about a lot of things. But I know my limits now." Morganen looked up and met Kendric's eyes. "I never told you, sir, that Cara spoke to me very, very highly of you. She loved you very much."
Kendric's lips compressed into a tight line. "I know that. And I loved her."
Morganen nodded. "Perhaps I didn't understand that then. I didn't understand what kind of man you were, why she would want to follow you to Grelfhaven." He let slip a small smile. "There isn't a man aboard this sh
ip, aboard any of the Gael ships, who won't follow you anywhere now!" He came to attention, rendering a textbook Gael Militia salute. "I relinquish command of the Gael Squadron to you, sir."
"Accepted." Kendric looked down at his leg, where a med tech was making the final adjustments to his brace. Embarrassed, he decided to change the subject. "And my first order, Captain, is for you to hand me my cane. I think I'd better get up to the bridge."
The passageway outside the sickbay was crowded with men, most in their working coveralls, many in their dress grays. Shipboard security had failed utterly to clear the decks, and Kendric's appearance at the sickbay door caught them by surprise. Captain Morganen had to plow ahead, making way for Fleet Captain Fraser. "Let's go! Move aside, men! Make a hole! Let the man through!"
The applause began as a pattering of clapping hands from three or four individuals in the crowd. Then the sound began to swell like the surf at Culloden Cliffs above the Cuan Gorm. Someone cheered, and then another voice joined. Kendric made his way slowly along the crowded passageways, leaning on his cane with every step, as the corridors rang with the deafening salute of wildly cheering men.
The Gael Warrior's crew lined every corridor between sickbay and the bridge, filled every space except the elevators and the narrow pocket of space that Captain Morganen made for Kendric as they moved through the crowd.
As he approached the bridge, the men around him began to chant, "Ken-dric! Ken-dric! Ken-dric!" Such familiarity was against all regulations, Militia and Imperial, but there was no stopping it. The cheering continued as background and counterpoint to the chant. "Ken-dric] Ken-dricl"
The bridge door slid open and Kendric hobbled through, his leg throbbing with the effort. "Fleet Captain on the bridge!" the sentry announced with a voice that wavered at a high enough pitch to betray the young man's emotion. On the bridge, Kendric met another wall of sound, the bridge officers gathered in a sem icircle facing him, applauding with an enthusiasm equal to that of the crowd cheering in the outer passageways.
Morganen turned to Kendric as the applause died down.
"Welcome aboard. Fleet Captain Fraser!"
Three-dimensional space was displayed on the Warrior's main forward screen, with stars as points of white in empty blackness. A straight, glowing red line arrowed through nothingness.
"Extend," Kendric said, and the navigational computer adjusted the scale. The distances between stars shrank, and hundreds of new ones appeared on screen.
"I see only one possibility," Morganen said. He stood at Kendric's side, next to the command seat. "That red dwarf. About four thousand light years spinward."
Kendric spoke another command, and the computer image expanded with bewildering speed, until only a single point of light remained alone in the center of the screen. The red path ran very close by the star.
Data scrolled across the viewscreen next to the image. "ISC 783-098-3679," Kendric read aloud. "M3. Three planets..."
"That can't be it, Captain!" Morganen protested. "The outer two are gas giants, their satellites uninhabitable balls of rock and ice!"
"The inner planet—Greshem—is listed as the site of an Imperial outpost that a survey expedition established two years ago."
"A survey outpost, certainly! But...well, look at it! Tide-locked to its sun. Massive vulcanism on a planetary scale, with constant seismic activity from tidal effects! The day-side's a desert at the boiling point of water, while the night side has ice caps of water and frozen carbon dioxide! The atmosphere is breathable. Just barely, though, and only because of the TOG atmosphere processing plants. Despite the plants, the initial survey mentions poisonous heavy metals and sulfur compounds in the air..."
"Exactly."
"But, you can't mean that that is where TOG is taking our people!"
"That's exactly what I mean, Commander. Greshem has precisely the right combination of factors to make it a likely location for gennarite deposits."
"Gennarite!"
Kendric rubbed absently at his right wrist. The tattoo there itched intolerably. "Remember, Lenard, I'm something of an expert on gennium-arsenide now. Actually, I should think planets like Greshem are far more common than habitable satellites like Haetai-Aleph. Eighty percent of the stars in this Galaxy are red dwarfs. Gas giant satellites warm enough to support Humans are rather rare. But Greshem has everything Haetai-Aleph did. Its eccentric orbit makes for considerable stress.. .flexing in the crust, and that means volcanos. The heavy metals in the air suggest arsenic and arsenide compounds, among others. I'd say that the Imperial Galactic Survey Office has
found a new source of laser crystal ore."
"And our families are being transported there, to start the mines!" He stared in horror at the red line passing the Greshem sun. It was the course projected by the computer, based on the direction and speed of the transports when they had departed the Argrian system days before. There was no proof that Greshem was their destination, but the coincidence seemed ominous.
Kendric did not believe that it was coincidence. From what he knew of TOG's enlightened mining methods and techniques, he could guess at the staggering casualty rates involved with opening a new laser crystal mine on a hostile world.
"It also means that Gracchi does not plan to negotiate with us for their release. Or if he does, it will be with some kind of promise that we can go be with them!"
"Oh, God..."
"But I think we can extend to Citizen Gracchi a small surprise."
All Imperial Legionnaire Marines aboard this facility will hold themselves in readiness for an immediate assault upon the mutinous ships, at the order of Overlord Gracchi. Special attention is to be paid to the battleship, the Gael Warrior, which is perceived as the key to the renegades' plans.
—From Provisional Governor Malatya's orders to Imperial Marines under his command, Alba Port, 19 Oct 6830
"Tactical."
The main screen showed the Argrian system, diamonds and squares and triangles of color showing different classes of target in different, far-flung orbits. In the center of the screen was the blue sphere of Alba, with Alba Port circling in low orbit, followed by a small parade of waiting commercial craft. The Corrine was there.
I love you, T.C.!
Farther out, nearly 38,000 kilometers from Alba, the massive Very Large Communications Array hung in Albasynchronous orbit, circling Alba precisely once in one Alban day, and so always seeming to remain over Alba's capital.
Three cruisers—two Mercenarius Class light cruisers and a heavy Mars Class, held their orbits around Argrian, several AU farther out. Symbols that marked gathering flocks of fighters hovered near.
At the moment, the Gael Squadron held an overwhelming numerical superiority over the TOG ships insystem. If it came to a fight, however, the match would not be so one-sided as it seemed. The squadron's three corvettes and three destroyers combined would not be a match for the one Mars Class cruiser. Reannruadh and the Gael
Warrior, acting in concert, would be able to defeat the TOG cruiser squadron, but to what purpose? So that the other seven ships could escape? How long would they be able to elude pursuit by the reinforcements that must be within days—perhaps hours—of reaching Alba?
"Here's our key," Kendric said, expanding the tactical view to concentrate on one small part of the display. "The VLCA in Al-basynch."
"They'll already have called for reinforcements," Morganen observed.
"True. But once we boost outsystem, that comm station is the one that will coordinate the attempts to track us down and trap us."
"We're going outsystem, then?"
"Do we have a choice?"
"I wonder." Morganen's hands clenched at his sides. His long face worked for a moment with some undefinable emotion. "To abandon our homeworld..."
"If we stay, a TOG fleet will be down on us before we can say 'Hi, there.' You were at Trothas, Lenard. You know how much of a chance we would stand against that kind of force."
"Aye. I was at Trothas.
I remember what they did to the planet, too."
"Yeah. The problem will be keeping them from turning our own homeworlds to desert after we leave." He opened his intercom. "Communications?"
"Yessir!"
"Hello, Alec. What is the situation on ship-to-ship?"
Normally, ships in port could communicate with one another through the Port Control Communications Center. It was possible, though not usual, for ships to talk to one another directly by radio. The station's comm center would certainly overhear both types of communication, however. Usually, this was not a problem. Now, however...
"We've been maintaining direct radio communications for routine traffic, Captain," Munro said. "Stuff we didn't want CC to know about we've been passing ship to ship by laser." Laser beams carrying communications channels could be aimed precisely enough to transmit messages from one ship to the ship berthed next to it, with no way for the Port itself to intercept them. "There've also been a lot of unofficial messages passing."
"Unofficial?"
"Yessir. Crewmen with flashlights, using code. I daresay every ship in the squadron already knows you're back aboard, Captain."
Kendric chuckled, remembering an old joke about rumor travelling through the fleet faster than light—and without the need for VLCAs. Starship crewmen were quick to invent their own codes, and their own ways for passing them. It was nearly impossible for a Fleet Captain or commodore to pull a snap inspection on one ship, and then have his appearance on another ship come as a surprise. Word of his activities spread too quickly, and by devious routes.
"Very well. Get me an 'official' channel, but make it secure. We have some planning to do."
The Legatus Maximus snapped an Imperial salute. "Ave, Supra-domine!"
"What is it, Legate?"
"Word has just arrived, my Lord. The operation on the planet's surface has been successfully completed."
"Good. Good! The mutineers are alone, then, without help."
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